Is Your Language Arts Living?

When we think about language arts, we should begin with its origin and remember that God is the creator of language. He was the first to use words to speak, to bring into being all of creation. Everything that we see, hear, touch, taste, smell, and understand sprung into creation in obedience to God’s powerful and authoritative words.

Let there be light, and there was light . . . Let us make man in our image, after our likeness . . . And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.” Genesis 1

God had two purposes for language: creation and communication. But there’s an even deeper purpose beyond communication—connection. After using words to bring into existence creation, God shifts and uses words to speak to the pinnacle of His creation, mankind.

“Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it . . . Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food.” Genesis 1

From the beginning, we see that God had a special purpose for language—to communicate with the people He created and ultimately connect with them in an eternal relationship. The Creator became a communicator through the vehicle of spoken language. Language that would in time be written down for all mankind to receive: the living, enduring Holy Word of God. 

Because God is a communicator and we are made in His image, we too are communicators. God created us with the ability to both express and receive language, and this is vital because God had—and still has—an important message for us to hear and receive through words intentionally and artfully combined into a living language we call Scripture.

“For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.” Hebrews 4:12 

God made language living and purposeful.

And as we study Scripture, we observe that God is the master word artist. He breathed out His words into the hearts and minds of the authors who wrote down what God told them. Second Peter 1:21 tells us, 

“For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man. But men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.” 

These men used a great variety of rich literary elements and techniques, and interesting language concepts and structures when communicating God’s words. They were brilliant word artists, which makes Scripture the pinnacle source for language arts study. 

And this is why I wrote Living Verse Language Arts and Scripture. I want students to learn from the original creator of language as they study how He communicated to us through the brilliant, beautiful and varied styles that we find in Scripture. 

This volume is unique and special because it uses passages from both the old and the New Testament to teach language arts concepts. As students learn from passages that are “living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword,” God will be speaking directly to their hearts and minds, communicating the message He has for them to receive. 

I’ll keep you up to date on when Living Verse Scripture will be ready to order and ship, but we plan to have the curriculum available spring 2025.

So what makes language arts living? Language arts is living when a student studies and learns from living book authors who spark in the student living ideas that express themselves in language that results in living communication and, ultimately, connection with other living people. To put it plainly:

Language arts is living when it connects us to others.

Charlotte Mason tells us that education is a life and that this life is sustained on ideas that are conveyed between people.

“Ideas are of spiritual origin, and God has made us so that we get them chiefly as we convey them to one another, whether by word of mouth, written page, Scripture word, musical symphony…we must sustain a child’s inner life with ideas as we sustain his body with food.”

Our children’s minds are alive and waiting to be fed with living ideas that delight, inspire and stir their imagination. Where do these living ideas come from? Mostly from living books filled with living language. Charlotte Mason tells us, 

“For the mind lives, grows and is nourished upon ideas; mere information is to it as a meal of sawdust to the body.”

Teaching language arts outside the context of a living passage is like offering our children a meal of sawdust. It robs them of the intellectual nourishment that comes from a deeper understanding of the structure and the artistry of language. 

Sadly, our educational institutions have reduced language arts to a sterile academic subject to be endured. Most curricula teach grammar, punctuation, vocabulary, and literary and language devices as separate topics to be memorized and tested, most often using fill in the blank, matching and multiple-choice worksheets. 

The “arts” of language are taken from their home and isolated—taught out of context from the beautifully written literature, poems, and Scripture we classify as living passages. 

If you open the typical language arts workbook, you’ll quickly see it was written for the purpose of students producing the right answer rather than students expressing their unique learning. Most of the teaching passages are not written by authors who artfully express living ideas and language, but rather by curriculum writers who fabricate passages from which the student can easily extract a predetermined correct answer. 

This is not a living language arts education.

Have you ever considered that punctuation doesn’t have a purpose outside of writing? We don’t need a period or a question mark when we speak, only when we write. So when we teach punctuation outside of where it lives, the student doesn’t gain a deeper understanding of the punctuation mark’s purpose. They may be able to define what a semicolon is, but they won’t see an example of how to use it artfully. 

What about vocabulary? Many programs teach words and their definitions, and may even provide exercises that prompt the student to fill in the correct word, but does this teach the student how to use the word effectively in his own composition? Someone else has written a sentence for the purpose of producing the correct answer. This is vastly different from teaching words for the purpose of language expression, to make the student’s writing stronger and more refined.

How about grammar? That part of language arts that students dread most. Who can blame them given the dry list of grammar rules most programs require students to memorize. But again, does grammar exist alone, isolated from human communication? We rarely see errors in subject-verb agreement when speaking; but we’re sure to find them in writing.

Grammar is a collection of language concepts to be applied and expressed, not memorized and tested. 

Figurative language is a popular language arts topic. Students love learning about similes and metaphors and personification and all the others. But when figurative language is taught by definition only, extracted from a whole living passage, the child misses the brilliance of how the figurative language communicates beyond the surface. If students are required to only define or recognize figurative language and not apply it to their own composition, they miss the opportunity to write with deeper beauty and enjoyment. 

When the child sees the reason the author structured the passage in a certain way and why the author established a certain voice through thoughtful vocabulary and sentence placement, the child’s knowledge of language is deepened. And when he recognizes the effect of sentence variety and intentional punctuation, his language learning becomes internalized; he begins to perceive that language is an art. 

And in time begins expressing himself artfully.

This is why it’s critical that students learn language arts through whole living passages written by master authors. Our young communicators should sit before the works of the best writers, studying their craft of choosing and ordering words, sentences, paragraphs, and whole works of poetry and literature. 

This is exactly why, in my curriculum and classes, I have students study entire poems, full works of literature and complete passages of Scripture—so they can perceive how the individual elements of language arts are combined to create a beautiful, whole and living work. 

Charlotte Mason talked about children being nourished on the best thoughts of the best minds and told us, 

“Our real concern is that children should have a good and regular supply of mind-stuff to think upon; that they should have large converse with books as well as with things; that they should become intimate with great men through the books and works of art they have left us, the best part of themselves.” 

I so agree with Charlotte Mason. Our children deserve to learn from the best and we should prioritize curating the most excellent and engaging works we can find for our children’s language arts learning. 

The elements that make up language arts—the grammar, the vocabulary, the figurative language, the literature and language devices—all have a place to live and express themselves.

And that place is in narration and in composition. 

Charlotte Mason tells us that children take pleasure in expressing what they know, which is why verbal and written narration are essential avenues for a child expressing his knowledge. There’s no substitute. She explains that children are able to tell what they’ve read or heard, not only with accuracy, but with spirit and originality. And we want that to come forth in our children, don’t we? 

This is what we’re aiming for in language arts.

This is our end goal—expressive language that is original, brilliant and artful. 

We want our children’s genius ideas to find their place in writing, and we want to offer this opportunity to our children each and every day. This is why notebooking is so vital. It draws on the personality of the child, helping him develop his voice and style of expressive language—one of the essential aspects of a living language arts program.

When you introduce a child to a living passage that you’ve carefully chosen, helping him see the language elements the author used, then asking him to model the passage using his own words and the language elements that he studied to express his unique living ideas, you’ve made language arts come alive. And you’ve taught it with the original purpose in mind—using language to communicate to others for the end goal of connecting with them in a meaningful way.

If you employ this method throughout your children’s education, they will develop writing skills naturally and will mature in artful composition. 

After your children engage with poetry or literature, give them the opportunity to express through notebooking what they’ve observed, enjoyed and learned from the author’s use of language. What language elements did the author choose and how did they assemble those elements to make the writing beautiful and powerful? 

When your children absorb the living language coming from the author, they naturally learn the elements of language arts because they’re seeing them within the piece of writing. They’re understanding the variety of language elements that can be used. When they study a complete work of living language from a whole book perspective, they’re able to understand all the different parts that make the whole and how they fit together, just like a puzzle.

Any original composition, whether it’s a sentence from an early elementary student or a poem from a high schooler, deserves to be honored and kept safe, which is why it’s paramount to preserve your child’s notebooking and writing in beautiful notebooks. 

Every piece of writing is special because there will never be another person on earth who will assemble words to express ideas in the way that your child did, and these works should be treated as keepsakes. 

Our children are living beings and living communicators made in the image of God. Their language has purpose as it flows from them to others around them. When the unique genius that God put in our children comes forth through narration and notebooking, confidence is developed. Our children are learning to express themselves fluently and confidently. They’re able to express who they are through words in a way that they are proud of, and in a way that connects them to other people.

And this is God’s original intent for language arts. The books, the songs, the Scriptures that we love impact us in really powerful ways. Through them, someone communicates his or her ideas in ways that connect with us, that move us, that transform us. 

A living language arts creates this type of transformation. It breeds brilliant thinkers and brilliant communicators who use language to impact the lives of others.

 If you instill in your children this vision, they will begin to speak and write with intentionality. And if you start when they’re young and continue to think of their language arts education in terms of the application of it through notebooking and writing, composition will become natural for them. Through the years, they will become mature and artful writers. 

You won’t need a separate writing curriculum that’s based on a formula. Your children will naturally know how to write, they’ll naturally know how to use the variety of language elements available to them to creatively and confidently communicate and ultimately connect with others.

That’s the image of God in your children. And that’s what we’re going for. That’s the end goal.